A/Prof Kristen Radford

A/Prof Kristen Radford leads the Cancer Immunotherapies Group at Mater Research in the Translational Research Institute in Brisbane Australia. A/Prof Radford completed her PhD in melanoma biology in Newcastle, NSW and was awarded NSW Young Australian of the Year for this work, then completed a postdoc at Cancer Research UK in London, before joining Mater Research. Her research is focused on understanding human dendritic cells and applying this knowledge to the development of new cancer vaccines against cancer. She developed a dendritic cell vaccine that was translated to a first-in-man clinical trial for metastatic prostate cancer. Her group was one of the first to characterise the human Clec9A+ (CD141+) dendritic cell subtype as being important targets for anti-tumour and anti-viral immune responses. She is now pursuing the therapeutic potential of this discovery with international funding to develop vaccines that specifically target human Clec9A+ DC in vivo. A/Prof Radford is also Director of the Australian Humanised Mouse Program. “Humanised” mice are immunodeficient mice reconstituted with human hematopoietic stem cells that develop functioning human immune cells, including dendritic cells. These are emerging next-generation models for human immuno-oncology and are valuable models for understanding human dendritic cell biology and evaluating new human cancer immunotherapies.